A host of British acting greats have come together to recreate a modern version of Leonardo Da Vinci's biblical painting The Last Supper. Robert Powell, who played Jesus Christ in 1970s mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, takes centre stage in the picture, with Colin Firth on his right and Julie Walters, the only woman in the it, at his left, taking the place of Mary Magdalene.
Other stars recreating the roles of Jesus' apostles are Sir Michael Gambon, Simon Callow, Tom Conti, Peter Eyre, Anthony Andrews, Steven Berkoff, Tim Pigott-Smith, John Alderton and Sir Antony Sher.
Photographer Alistair Morrison, who recreated the 15th Century masterpiece, says, "My first two choices were Robert Powell who had to be Jesus, recreating the famous role played in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth, and Julie Walters, who was asked to play Mary Magdalene and they both readily agreed. Their enthusiasm and influence helped to bring together this outstanding group of actors."
Prints of the piece, dubbed Actors' Last Supper, will go on sale at the National Portrait Gallery in London, with a percentage of profits going towards new collections.

Now this teaser is such a tease that we don't even know what it's teasing! Sounds just like J.J. Abrams, right? The Star Trek and soon to be Star Wars director released the above video, simply titled "Stranger" earlier today on the official Bad Robot YouTube channel. The black-and-white clip shows a man falling into the crashing surf while portentous narration says, "He arrived knowing nothing of himself. Who is he? Soon he will know. Because what begins at the water shall end there. And what ends there shall once more begin. This is what happens when we become lost...and banished...and are erased...and reborn."
So, yeah, a lot of pseudo-profound blather. But as transparently manipulative as this clip is, our response is probably exactly what he wants: sure, J.J., we’ll play. Here are five theories as to what gestating project this could be a trailer for, and, oh, rest assured, both Star Trek and Star Wars will be among them.
Bad Robot
1. It’s a Tease for Abrams’ novel with Doug Dorst called S. , out Oct. 29.
Publisher Mulholland Books lists this as the official description: “At the core of this multilayered literary puzzle of love and adventure is a book of mysterious provenance. In the margins, another tale unfolds—through the hand-scribbled notes, questions, and confrontations of two readers. Between the pages, online, and in the real world, you’ll find evidence of their interaction, ephemera that bring this tale vividly to life.”
All of which is to say that S. is a multimedia experience more than it is a stand-alone novel. It also sounds strange. Or shall we say, stranger. We’re so focused on the idea of “stranger” as a noun because of that mysterious surf-tossed figure that we forget it might be used here as a comparative adjective instead. That doesn’t mean that the figure in question is unimportant. The clip even ends with the text “Soon he will know,” but I don’t think this person is necessarily a “stranger.”
2. It’s a Promo for Believe,the NBC Drama He’s Developed with Alfonso Cuaron for Midseason 2014 — The rather trippy premise of the series is that a girl with supernatural powers is raised under the protection of a mystical group called the “True Believers” and they even bust a death row inmate out of prison to serve as her guardian. Maybe this is right after he’s been freed?
3. It’s Our First Glimpse of Star Wars Episode VII! — Okay, the fact that the video obviously features some of Michael Giacchino’s trademark piano chords should dispel this notion, since John Williams is attached to score Episode VII. But what if this really is our first live-action glimpse of that Galaxy Far, Far Away since Revenge of the Sith? Maybe the dude with his mouth sewn shut is some freaky new Dark Side warrior and the castaway stumbling in the surf is a Jedi exile trying to find himself. Ooh, or maybe the surf dude is a survivor of the Second Death Star’s explosion who finds himself having crash landed by one of the Forest Moon of Endor’s seas and now he’s menaced by a really scary member of those forest-dwelling witches from those ‘80s Ewoks movies!
4. It’s a Tease for the Next Star Trek Movie (Or at least an Into Darkness DVD feature) — Maybe after Khan was put back into cryofreeze at the end of Into Darkness he and his crew were launched back into space only to crash into the ocean of some alien world, and this is him moments after finally reaching shore. The sewn-lips people will be his new followers who he’ll lead into battle as the ultimate weapon of revenge against Kirk.
5. J.J. Abrams Has Finally Decided to Adapt Albert Camus’ L’Etranger, a.k.a. The Stranger — The French existentialist’s novel about a man who’s convicted and sent to the guillotine for shooting an Arab not because of the evidence but because he didn’t properly mourn his mother’s death seems ripe for a J.J. Abrams adaptation. It’s about a man tossed about by fate and other absurdist forces beyond his control, who’s also capable of great violence, much like the characters on Lost. And like in this clip, the pivotal moment in The Stranger occurs on a seashore. Indian Naveen Andrews played an Arab on Lost, he can here too! It all makes…oh, who are we kidding. J.J.’s probably never even heard of Albert Camus.
Or it’s a tease for our long-awaited Jacob origin story Lost spin-off series! Just what all of us are dying to see.
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The frigid months to come will see our friends at NBC spending a good amount of time overseas — before trekking over to Russia for the 2014 Winter Olympics, the Peacock is making a quick stop in the Swiss Alps (or, at the very least, a network studio designed to look like the Swiss Alps) for a live production of The Sound of Music. But team figure skating (the Olympics' newest event) and singing convents will take a backseat to NBC's most anticipated addition: Jimmy Fallon as the host of The Tonight Show.
During its upfront presentation on Monday, NBC informed attendees that Fallon would be taking Jay Leno's seat during revealed the date during the network's broadcast of the Winter Olympics, stepping in during the second week of the international games (the Olympics kick off on Feb. 7; Fallon should take the reigns on Feb. 14). Following the conclusion of the dynamic tradition, Fallon will assume the regular 11:35 PM time slot permanently — as the Olympics is often cause for schedule shifting, leaving the Tonight Show broadcast times for the week rather nebulous at this time — on Monday, Feb 24, 2014. At this time, Fallon's fellow Saturday Night Live alum Seth Meyers will also step in as the official host of Late Night, airing at 12:35 AM.
NBC also revealed the planned broadcast date of its previously announced live production of The Sound of Music, a performance of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical (first immortalized on the big screen by Julie Andrews) starring Carrie Underwood as Maria von Trapp. The 3-hour special will air Thursday, Dec. 5, 2013.
Alongside talks of Fallon's and Meyers' promotions, and the musical production, NBC also shared a handful of comedic and dramatic trailers for upcoming programs. Check them out here.
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One of the biggest political talking points of the summer of 2012 spawned in a Houston movie house one hot Friday in July. The conservative documentary 2016: Obama's America, created by political commentator Dinesh D'Souza and released on a single screen in Texas' biggest city, had quickly grown to nationwide fame and infamy, ultimately becoming the fourth highest grossing documentary in history. Hungry for that same serving of buzz, D'Souza is following up his film with another cinematic jab at the POTUS — this time, he's punching up the title a bit: America, a movie that will combine the filmmaker's animosity for President Obama with, as depicted in the below trailer, an extended metaphor about America never having existed.
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The Hollywood Reporter shares D'Souza's comments about the new documentary: "President Obama looks at America as an oppressive force, while I and millions of others around the world have a different view – that America has been a great blessing to its own people and to the world." Delve into D'Souza's mind-melting hypothetical in the first teaser for the film.
Follow Michael Arbeiter on Twitter @MichaelArbeter
[Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo]
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The ABCs of Death, an anthology of 26 short films about people being killed in spectacularly gruesome, farcical, and universally disgusting ways, is scary in a way its makers may not have anticipated: it shows how deeply uninspired and visionless horror-movie filmmaking has become.
Ever since the genre stopped caring about bottling the sensation of fear in favor of shock and gore, it’s gotten away from true horror, a format that works best when deeply invested in the psychology of fear. Movies like the Saw franchise and its various torture-porn imitators have become less and less interested in messing with their audience’s brains than moving the goalpost of the grotesque ever further, an objective that ensures obsolescence. There are only so many severed limbs and plucked eyeballs you can see before you’re irrevocably desensitized. What haven’t we seen that could still shock us? The list of possibilities grows smaller and smaller. Tom Six actually managed to horrify us in a whole new way with The Human Centipede, but even that nightmare concept became commercialized, sequelized, and stale.
Twenty-seven directors, all supposedly luminaries in the horror movie world, were brought in to film two-to-four minute segments for The ABCs of Death, in an attempt to show the diversity the genre still posseses. Sadly, rather than expand the parameters of horror, these twenty-seven filmmakers mostly converge on the same tropes. There are three conditions for each short: they must begin and end on an image of red (guaranteeing that at least half of the shorts begin and end with a shot of blood), there must be one death, and they must correspond to a letter of the alphabet — meaning we get titles like “F is for Fart,” “L is for Libido,” and “W is for WTF.” That ensures the audience will experience acute B for Boredom on account of L for Laziness.
Anyone who’s made short films can tell you that cinematic storytelling in under 10 minutes tends toward heightened emotions, with narrative twists that seek to compress a feature’s worth of sensation into a tiny window. Add a requisite horror element and you get a succession of Jack in the Box effects. “D is for Dogfight” is transgressive, I suppose, in its depiction of a man graphically biting a dog, but it's diminished because, in the end, that short is entirely about how transgressive it is. And most of these films are just wafer-thin hooks for startling images. The opening salvo of a segment, “A is for Apocalypse,” about a wife taking care of her bedridden husband who reaches a drastic decision regarding his care, should play like a more gruesome version of Michael Haneke’s Amour. Instead it is robbed of any resonance because director Nacho Vigolondo provides no context to the couple's relationship.
However, the filmmakers here who successfully answer the question “What can still scare us?” locate that answer where great artists before them did: in real-world fears. Eli Roth’s Hostel movies stand as credible horror unlike the Saw flicks because they tap a uniquely insular (and uniquely American) fear of the rest of the world beyond the United States. In The ABCs of Death Hobo with a Shotgun auteur Jason Eisener does just that in “Y is for Youngbuck,” which translates a very real fear of childhood sexual abuse into cathartic revenge.
Similarly Simon Rumley’s “Pressure” taps a mother’s uncertainty about how to provide for her children, and shows just how far she is willing to go to support them. Lee Hardcastle’s “T is for Toilet” finds horror in what used to be an old standby in the heyday of Polanski: plumbing, and its function of keeping us blissfully unaware of where excrement goes. Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers), possibly the most original American horror maestro of the last decade, dives deep into the realm of body horror with “M is for Miscarriage,” as do Amer masterminds Bruno Forzani and Héléne Cattet with the ode to David Cronenberg “O is for Orgasm.”
These shorts are the ones that actually get inside our heads. If our brains are our biggest erogenous zone, so is it also the nexus of our fears. Not our stomachs, nor our adrenal glands. That’s why you need story to fuel and contextualize the greatest scares. Without story giving context to sex, you’ve got YouPorn. Without story giving context to horror, you’ve got much of The ABCs of Death.
1.5/5
What did you think of the film? Let Christian Blauvelt know on Twitter @Ctblauvelt
[Photo Credit: Drafthouse Films]
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Kimberly Peirce, Chloë Moretz, and Julianne Moore on the set of Carrie
After losing out on a 2013 Oscar nomination in the Best Director category, Ben Affleck and his film Argo became the season's biggest talking point. After losing out on a 2013 Oscar nomination in the Best Director category, Kathryn Bigelow and her film Zero Dark Thirty faded out of the picture.
Already battling wishy-washy political arguments that threatened to shift the spotlight away from the film, Bigelow's docudrama thriller was all but knocked out of Oscar consideration when the critically acclaimed director failed to sit alongside 2012's contenders. The snub was a reminder of a sad fact that remains a talking point each year: In the 85-year history of the Academy Awards, only four women have been nominated for the "Best Director" Oscar. And only of them won: Bigelow, for 2009's The Hurt Locker.
There's an imbalance of female and male directors represented in the Hollywood mainstream. It's a point argued year after year, yet it's a statistic that never seems to change. According to a study by Dr. Martha M. Lauzen, Executive Director, Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, School of Theatre, Television and Film, 18 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films of 2012 were women. And only 9 percent of all directors working on those films were women. While that's a 4 percent bump up from 2011, the percentage of women directors working in 2012 was the same as in 1998.
In 2013, three women are slated to direct studio-driven, wide-released feature films: Tyler Perry Presents Peeples (May 10), directed by Tina Gordon Chism, Carrie (Oct. 18), directed by Kimberly Peirce, and Disney's animated feature Frozen (Nov. 27), co-directed by Jennifer Lee alongside Chris Buck. A few more will sprout from between the blockbusters into limited releases: Sally Potter's Ginger &amp; Rosa (March 15), Sofia Copolla's Bling Ring (June 14), Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist (April 26), Maggie Carey's The To Do List (Aug. 16), Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves (Sept. 20), Susanne Bier's Serena (Sept. 27), Diablo Cody's Paradise, and the Soska sisters' American Mary. Women are making movies, but considering the sheer number of films in theaters from year to year, they're not making enough movies — and they're rarely making them with the support of Hollywood.
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Chism, screenwriter of 2002's Drumline and 2006's ATL, makes her directorial debut this spring with Peeples, but breaking through as a female force in Hollywood required hard bargaining. "I've always been attracted to writer/directors and Nancy Meyers was a huge inspiration for me in her work," Chism says. "So, as a writer, I've used my script as leverage to get in the room to plead my case to direct it. If I didn't have that script, I don't think I would have been given the opportunity."
With Peeples — which stars Craig Robinson and Kerry Washington — ready for release, Chism already has a follow-up in place, a thriller set up at Sony. Despite having a feature under her belt, Chism says the process was the same: more teeth-pulling, more clinging to her script, more proving herself capable.
The writer/director recalls her first studio meeting, during which Fox gave her a number of different script ideas, none of which worked for the budding filmmaker. "We talked about all kinds of ideas and I hated all of the things they pitched me," Chism says. "I thought, 'This is a nightmare.' In that meeting, they told me they were toying around with a movie about a band. At the time, it was about a white kid and a black kid who can't read. And I come from the South and my mind went to historically black colleges. Thank God. And I remember, they were like, 'There are all-black colleges?'"
"I'm not sure if I'll have to do that forever," Chism says. "I think it has to do with power, basically, and in this industry, the writer doesn't hold the largest bit of power. So it's more palatable for people to deal with women as writers." Hollywood does appear to be more receptive to hiring females in that role; Lauzen's study reveals that women account for 15 percent of the writers working on the top 250 films of 2012.
Like Chism, Jennifer Lee also comes from a writing background. Before being recruited by Disney Animation head honcho John Lasseter to co-direct Frozen, Lee had sold two screenplays: an adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights and an original script being developed at Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company. She was brought into the Disney fold by her Phil Johnston, a friend from Columbia University's film school who recruited her to write on Wreck-It Ralph. After meeting weekly for years in order to "push each other as writers," Johnston asked Lee if she would be willing to move to Los Angeles on a week's notice to take over Wreck-It's script, which he had initially developed years before. The success of the 2012 Oscar nominee — and the nurturing environment of a long-gestating animated film — landed her the job co-directing Frozen.
Concept art from Jennifer Lee's Frozen
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Unlike live-action's homogeneous roster of filmmakers, animation has traditionally welcomed female directors. In 2012, Brenda Chapman became the first woman to receive an Oscar for Best Animated Feature for Brave (sharing it with Mark Andrews, who took over as director halfway through production). Vicky Jenson (Shark Tale) nearly took home the award in 2001 for co-directing Shrek — in the category's first year, only the producers were awarded with the gold statue. In the grand scheme of Hollywood, Jennifer Yuh Nelson possessed the most important honor: Her Dreamworks Animation film, Kung Fu Panda 2, is the highest-grossing female-helmed movie of all time, with a whopping worldwide gross of $665.7 million.
In terms of creativity, box office numbers are inconsequential. But in Hollywood, they're a calling card and a record-setting number like Nelson's Kung Fu Panda 2 gross goes a long way. Which explains why women filmmakers are climbing uphill to get projects with larger budgets off the ground. Running down the list of the highest-grossing directors of all time (based on BoxOfficeMojo.com's director filmography totals), we don't find a woman until No. 60: Lana Wachowski, director of The Matrix trilogy, who first entered the industry as a man. Further down at No. 81 is Betty Thomas, one of the few women to have shaped a career out of directing modest blockbusters. Including The Brady Bunch Movie, Doctor Dolittle, 28 Days, and the recent Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, Thomas' films have collected nearly $563.3 million.
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Chloë Moretz in Carrie
For women to stake a claim in box office history, they must be given the opportunity to direct blockbusters, the type of genre filmmaking narrowly aimed at adolescent boys. A 2011 study released by the Motion Picture Association of America cites that the gender composition of moviegoers was balanced, about 51 percent women, 49 percent men, with the 25 - 39 age demographic representing the largest portion of the audience, around 28 percent. Yet most of the major studio tentpoles are male-driven. Out of 45 movies based on comic books released between 2003 and 2013, only one of them was directed by a woman: Lexi Alexander's 2008 film Punisher: War Zone.
The lack of women represented in genre movies makes Kimberly Peirce's horror remake Carrie an event in itself. Like many female directors actively working in the film industry, Peirce is hesitant to make gender divide a talking point when discussing her new adaptation of the Stephen King classic. The Boys Don't Cry and Stop-Loss director wants to be seen as simply that — a director. Still, she believes women do add perspective to genre stories, and in the case of Carrie, perspectives that echo themes laid down by the book's author.
"What I love about King was, he was writing about a fear of the period," Peirce says. The director recalls King's notorious experience of working as a janitor and discovering a bloody tampon, a terrifying event that Peirce revels in. "Women may have fear about their tampons and their menstrual cycles, but you know what? They’ve got to deal with it on a monthly basis. It’s a fear that you know in a way that this guy may not know. So it took on epic proportions. So it is really interesting that it was a man’s fear that birthed [the story], and then I get to [view it] through a different tunnel."
Peirce acknowledges that Brian De Palma, director of the acclaimed 1976 version of Carrie, knows "a lot about women." Peirce also finds her approach to the material unique, because it's informed from personal experiences. "The truth is, I have a mother and I have had wars with my mother [and] I know what those wars feel like," Peirce says. "I know what those feel like from my perspective, the claustrophobia in the female-female, mother-daughter relationship. I also know how snarky the girls can be. It doesn’t mean the men can’t be. Female terror is a very interesting terror. It’s relentless, it’s diffuse, it communicates."
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For her follow-up to Peeples, Chism made a point to pen a thriller with a strong female voice, and it's a challenge for her. According to the writer/director, Drumline, ATL, and Peeples all tested higher with men, and she sees that as the result of an ability to write strong male characters. With her next movie, she wants to challenge the pre-conceived notions of what a movie with strong female characters has to be about. "I think that the similarities that a lot of minorities have to face — whether it's a woman in business or African-American — sometimes the reaction is, 'I don't want to make it about me being a woman,'" Chism says. "But I've yet to find the formula to walking into a room and an executive not seeing both things when they see me."
Over the course of her career, she's well-aware of what an executive is looking for from her. "I [can] feel the expectations that, 'Oh, you're going to do a chick flick and that's going to diminish the numbers we do.' I'd say that's 100 percent the case."
Producer Gale Anne Hurd is one of the rarities, a female producer who, while never stepping into the director's chair, has helped both men and women bring sci-fi blockbusters, independent dramas, and hit TV shows to life. In 2013, Hurd launched another season of her hit horror show The Walking Dead and debuted the teen romance drama Very Good Girls at the Sundance Film Festival. And yet, even she doesn't see much of a home for women at the movie studios. "I think it speaks to the fact that independent film is where it's at, because there were more films than ever at Sundance directed by women," Hurd says. "And mainstream film has really taken a step backward in so many ways and one significant factor is that you don't find much diversity in the ranks of directors. Now that's changing a lot in television and I think some of the best work right now is on television. The strides that women are making as directors on television is more than compensating for the steps back in the ranks of major studio directors."
The latest from Jane Campion — another of the female quartet to have been nominated for the Best Director Oscar — is a prime example of Hurd's observation. Sundance Channel's upcoming series Top of the Lake, a deeply cinematic crime procedural, was written and directed by Campion. The series premiered in full at this year's Sundance — the first TV series to do so at the festival. Along with Campion's ambitious project, the festival also played host to a number of female-directed indies, including Lynn Shelton's Touchy Feely, Lake Bell's In a World…, Jerusha Hess' Austenland, and Stacie Passon’s Concussion. Thanks to a frenzy of distribution company purchasing, most are expected to arrive in theaters this year.
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Kerry Washington, Craig Robinson, and David Alan Grier in Tina Gordon Chism's Tyler Perry Presents Peeples
In the male-dominated world of directing, those with clout are the ones who can bring along sea change. The female voices are there, they just need to be cultivated and supported. Lee has not been working with Disney for long, but the animation process naturally helped her rise to the top. It promoted her organically. "Animation relies on a large team of people — story artists, visual development artists, animators, and a diverse production staff," Lee says. "And we don't just work together on one film and move on; I'm working with a lot of the same folks I worked with on Ralph. Working together for years, we really get to know each others' strengths and talents. The women get the chance to shine equally."
Chism's film recently swapped titles, shifting from We the Peeples to Tyler Perry Presents Peeples. After persisting to hold onto her romantic comedy and direct it herself, she was okay with the change. "They got the movie, they got the script. Leverage diminished."
Adding Perry to the marquee also works in her favor: With a built-in audience, a stamp of approval from the Madea mastermind is the cinematic version of "Oprah's Book Club." He also worked as Chsim's biggest supporter. "Tyler was very supportive," she says. "He just let me do my thing. He read it, he had his ideas, and then he said, 'You know what, I'm just going to let you go for it and I want to see what your voice would be, your take would be.' When he needed to block for me or support me, he did that. I have nothing but appreciation for him as a producer."
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Diablo Cody, who wrote the upcoming Evil Dead remake and is expected to have her own directorial debut, Paradise, arrive sometime this year, shares the frustration over the gender divide. She sums up her feelings with comment that may sound defeatist, but it's honest and steadfast: "It's been that way for a long time, so I'm just doing what I can."
Lee feels similarly, letting her work on Frozen and her collaboration with co-director Buck speak for itself. "We share a sense of storytelling that doesn't feel male or female. I think we were cast together because of our shared vision for Frozen, and because we work well together."
On the first day of shooting Peeples, Perry phoned Chism with words of wisdom. "He called and said, 'Put your head down and make a great movie. That's all anyone cares about. No one cares about anything else other than delivering a great movie. Have a great one, bye.'" From childhood, Chism was taught that "excellence in work is really the only barrier-breaking formula." The mantra pushed her each day on Peeples, even when the scenes were at their silliest. "At the end of the day, for me, whether I'm a female or male, there's a lot of investment, a lot on the line, and you have to make your day, make it good, and make a great film."
This year will see the release of three studio films directed by women — a minuscule number. Diversity doesn't have to be forced into the industry — hiring talented directors should always be the priority — but capable and creative female filmmakers are out there, waiting to be employed. They can take on any project, not just ones that boast demographics skewing towards their own gender. "I think a good director can do anything," Peirce says. "James Cameron was not an Avatar. Coppola was not a Godfather. You’re always looking to any character and figuring out where you want to take it."
Cody gives us a little hope for the future (or at least, this year): "Let's look at the positives, which is that the worst movies are dumped in the first quarter of the year. So maybe it means the women directed all the good ones."
Follow Matt Patches on Twitter @misterpatches
Additional reporting by Michael Arbeiter and Kelsea Stahler
[Photo Credit: Screen Gems, Hollywood.com, Walt Disney Pictures, Screen Gems, Nicole Rivelli/Lionsgate]

Chloe Sevigny Plays the Ex-Game: After getting her limbs torn off on American Horror Story, Chloe Sevigny was probably relieved when she landed her next gig: she'll be playing Danny's (Chris Messina) ex-wife on the very recently renewed Fox sitcom The Mindy Project. Sevigny's character is an accomplished war photographer named Christina, who comes to town to wine and dine Danny... again. She's on board for at least three episodes, which will begin airing in April. [TVLine]
Lost and Found: Lost star Naveen Andrews is heading back to TV on his former network. The actor has signed on to play a British agent who helps a man try to free his wife after she's imprisoned overseas following a political uprising. [Deadline]
Angus T. Jones Gets Bakula'd on 2.5 Men: Yep, you heard us right — Angus T. Jones is still on Two and a Half Men. And the Bible-thumping teen's character, Jake, is about to meet some competition in the romance department — competition in the form of former Quantum Leap star Scott Bakula. Bakula will play an auto dealership tycoon on the April 4th episode of the long-running series, and he will interfere with Jake's love life in a surprising way. [TVLine]
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The Walking Dead Meets The Exorcist: You wish! The closest we'll get to Linda Blair's spinning head on TV is Robert Kirkman's new comic book and horror series combo, set in the world of exorcisms. Kirkman is developing the script for Fox International Channels, and it will focus on a young man who has been “plagued by possession since he was a child. Now an adult, he embarks on a spiritual journey to find answers but what he uncovers could mean the end of life on Earth as we know it.” The project still needs a network, but given Kirkman's reputation, we're not too worried about a pilot order. [EW]
Fringe Creator Nabs Lili Taylor for New Pilot:Woohoo! Six Feet Under actress Lili Taylor has been cast as the female lead in J.H. Wyman's (Fringe) yet-untilted pilot, a buddy cop show set in the future. In Wyman's world, all LAPD officers are partnered with highly evolved human-like androids. It centers on the pairing of cop John Kennex and his android partner Dorian (Michael Ealy). Taylor will play the police captain, so yay for future android feminism! [Deadline]
The Voice Champ Falls Flat: Rascal Flatt, that is! Season 3 winner Cassadee Pope has found success in the country world, and now she's taking her show on the road. Pope will tour with the Grammy Award-winning trio Rascal Flatts on their Changed tour this summer. The singer tweeted, “Incredibly excited to announce I will be supporting the Rascal Flatts tour this summer. I’ll be playing right before the Band Perry. Yay!” Yay, indeed. [Hollywood Reporter]
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[PHOTO CREDIT: Ivan Nikolov/WENN]
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We admit, we've missed Josh Holloway on our television sets. (Who wouldn't?) We miss that hair, that Southern drawl and the various nicknames it would spout. We miss most of the Lost cast actually. We have to go baaaaaaack.
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Unfortunately, we're not able to go back to ABC's mythical island (no matter how many planes we take and lottery tickets we buy), but we are able to still see most of the cult show's stars. Holloway — who played dreamy bad boy Sawyer on Lost — will finally be back on the small screen for the upcoming CBS pilot Intelligence.
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Holloway will play a former Navy SEAL and intelligence office in the drama; the series focuses on a unit of the U.S. Cyber Command, and one particular agent who has "a microchip that has been implanted in his brain that allows him to access the entire electromagnetic spectrum." In other words, it's another CBS procedural, but this time it will feature someone from Lost! (So...kind of like Hawaii Five-O and Person of Interest!)
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With Holloway now back in his rightful place (our direct line of vision), we wanted to check on the rest of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 (and various others, and Others), and see how they've survived the post-Lost life. Spoiler alert: it doesn't matter because they'll all just get into heaven anyway. Check it out:
Daniel Day Kim (Jin): As previously mentioned, he's keeping CBS nice and warm for Holloway on Hawaii Five- O.
Terry O' Quinn (Locke): 666 Park Avenue didn't quite pan out over on ABC, but he's in good company with Daniel Day Kim on Hawaii Five-O now. (You can also catch him from time to time on TNT's Falling Skies).
Michael Emerson (Ben Linus): Ditto Emerson with CBS, just over on Person of Interest.
Yunjin Kim (Sun): Just minor roles on shows like The Neighbors, but thankfully that will all change when the upcoming Mistresses hits the air.
Ian Somerhalder (Boone): Making girls swoon over every week on the CW's smash The Vampire Diaries.
Maggie Grace (Shannon): Somehow got Taken on the big screen — twice — despite Liam Neeson's best efforts.
Jorge Garcia (Hurley): Alcatraz didn't quite pan out, but you can still catch him on the Lost-friendly ABC series Once Upon a Time.
Emilie de Ravin (Claire): In addition to some big screen roles (Remember Me, Public Enemies) since Lost ended, she, like Garcia, appears on the small screen on Once Upon a Time.
Dominic Monaghan (Charlie): Aw, Charlie. Well, you'll be happy to know he's got his own travel series over on BBC America called Wild Things where he does some, you guessed it, pretty wild things.
Naveen Andrews (Sayid): If you've got Syfy you can catch him on the British version of Sinbad.
Evangeline Lilly (Kate): Lilly has stayed away from TV since Lost wrapped up, opting for parts in big time movies like The Hurt Locker, Real Steel, and The Hobbit saga.
Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet): RIP V. The actress can be seen on NBC's post-apocalyptic Revolution and recently starred in the Lifetime TV movie Prosecuting Casey Anthony.
Harold Perrineau (Michael): The character actor has popped up everywhere from biker drama Sons of Anarchy to the short-lived TBS comedy Wedding Band, not to mention the Oscar nominated film Zero Dark Thirty.
Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond): You can catch him on shows like Scandal, The Mentalist, and Body of Proof, brutha.
Matthew Fox (Jack): It's best not to ask.
[Photo credit: ABC]
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The nominations for the 85th Academy Awards are out. But while Denzel Washington is laughing for having fooled the Academy into thinking Flight is an Oscar-worthy movie, Anne Hathaway is crying into her celebratory mimosa, and Kathryn Bigelow is trying hard not to cry for a completely different reason, we are scratching our heads. Thursday morning's announcement has left us with myriad ponderables. Here are 10 burning questions that have us yelling, "We want answers!" and running to Google faster than a cheetah on a treadmill.
The Best Supporting Actor category has a reputation for being dominated by Hollywood's veteran gentlemen. But, before this year, has there ever been an acting category filled with actors who already have an Oscar in their trophy case?
Nope. This would be the first time. Christoph Waltz won for Inglorious Basterds in 2010, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote in 2006, Robert De Niro for The Godfather: Part II (1975) and Raging Bull (1981), Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine in 2007, Tommy Lee Jones for The Fugitive in 1994.
This could be the third Oscar for Robert De Niro and Daniel Day-Lewis. Who else has three? And who has the most wins?
Actors Ingrid Bergman, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Walter Brennan all have three Oscars. But Katherine Hepburn beats them all with four Best Actress wins. Competitors in non-acting categories, however, rake in even more awards. Composer Alan Menken has eight, costume designer Edith Head has eight, visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren has nine, and Walt Disney has the distinction of winning the most Academy Awards — he has 22.
In addition to his hosting duties, Seth MacFarlane was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song category. Is this the first time a host has also been up for an award?
Nope! Just two years ago, James Franco co-hosted with Anne Hathaway while he was also nominated for Best Actor for 127 Hours. And before Franco, six other hosts played dual roles on the big night: Frank Capra (1938), Bob Hope (1952), David Niven (1958), Michael Caine (1972), Walter Matthau (1975), and Paul Hogan (1986). Capra, Hope, and Niven also walked away with trophies their respective years.
Austrian tear-jerker Amour has five chances to take home a trophy this year. How many times has the same movie been nominated for Best Picture as well as Best Foreign Language Film? And has the same movie ever won the Oscar in both categories?
There have only been nine foreign language films nominated for Best Picture: Grand Illusion, 1938; Z, 1969; The Emigrants, 1972; Cries and Whispers, 1973; Il Postino, 1995; Life Is Beautiful, 1998; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000; Letters from Iwo Jima, 2006; and Amour, 2012. Of those movies Z, Life Is Beautiful, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won Best Foreign Language Film rather than Best Picture. The Emigrants is the only film to lose both. Grand Illusion was nominated before Best Foreign Language Film was created, Letters from Iwo Jima was ineligible because it was an American production, and Cries and Whispers and Il Postino were not nominated. No movie has ever won both categories.
Silver Linings Playbook has nominations in the five biggest categories (Best Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Screenwriting). Has a film ever swept all five?
In Oscar history there have been three films to sweep the major acting categories as well as take directing, screenwriting, and Best Picture awards: It Happened One Night (1934), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
While Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are considered frontrunners for the Best Picture win, their directors (Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow, respectively) weren't nominated for Best Director. Is it rare for a film to take home Best Picture and not Best Director?
In a word, yes. Of the 85 films that have been awarded Best Picture, 65 of them have also taken home the award for Best Director. And in only three instances have the directors of Best Picture-winning films not been nominated themselves — Wings (1928), Grand Hotel (1932), and Driving Miss Daisy (1989).
Eiko Ishioka, who passed away this year, is nominated for Best Achievement in Costume Design for her work on Mirror, Mirror. How many Oscars have been awarded posthumously?
There have been 15 posthumous awards won in the competitive categories out of 73 nominations for people who were also in the "In Memoriam" reel that year. The most recent winner was Heath Ledger in 2008 for Best Supporting Actor in The Dark Knight. Composer Howard Ashman has the most posthumous nominations (he has four). Art director William A. Horning has the most wins: he won two awards in two consecutive years, for Gigi in 1958 and Ben-Hur in 1959. In 1959 he was also nominated for art direction of North by Northwest. That's one busy corpse! In Ishioka's Best Costume Design category there have been four posthumous nominations (three for the same person) and zero wins.
Lincoln, which has so far raked in over $145 million at the box office, is the only Best Picture contender this year you could really call a "blockbuster." What was the lowest grossing film to ever take the Best Picture category?
The lowest grossing Best Picture winner was The Hurt Locker in 2010, which only grossed $50 million. Four of this year's nine Best Picture nominees have currently grossed even less than that. Silver Linings Playbook has only made $35 million, Beasts of the Southern Wild has only made $11 million, Zero Dark Thirty has only made $5 million, and Amour $340,798. That makes The Hurt Locker look like Titanic.
Is Quvenzhane Wallis the youngest person to be nominated for an Oscar? And who's the oldest?
Nine-year-old Wallis is not the youngest person ever to be nominated; that distinction belongs to Kramer vs. Kramer's Justin Henry, who was eight at the time of his nomination. Wallis is also tied with Skippy's Jackie Cooper. Wallis is, however, the youngest actress to ever be nominated in the Best Actress category, beating out former youngster Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider). If she wins, Wallis will be the youngest person to ever win an Oscar. On the flip side, Amour's Emmanuella Riva is, at 85-years-old, the oldest woman to be nominated for Best Actress. And she is the second oldest person to ever be nominated for an acting Oscar — Gloira Stuart, who was 87 when she was nominated for Titanic, holds that title.
Quvenzhane Wallis was nominated for her first-ever film. Has an actor or director ever won the award for his or her debut project?
This happens a lot more often than you would think — 23 times, to be precise. Five actresses have won the Best Actress Oscar for their debut films: Shirley Booth, Come Back, Little Sheba (1952); Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday (1953); Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins (1964); Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl (1968); Marlee Matlin, Children of a Lesser God (1986).
Follow Abbey Stone on Twitter @abbeystone
[Photo Credit: 20th Century Fox]
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UPDATE: Samuel L. Jackson denied dropping an f-bomb (but does admit to cursing) on Twitter:
I only said FUH not FUCK!K was sposed to cut off da BULLSHIT, blew it!! twitter.com/SamuelLJackson…
— Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) December 16, 2012
EARLIER: We're used to cheering like a Spartan whenever Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon or another recently departed Saturday Night Live alum returns to Studio 8H. But SNL fans found themselves disappointed when a former SNL legend returned to glory on the sketch comedy show's stage. Dana Carvey — also known as one of the main reasons (save Chris Farley) the early 1990s is still held up on an SNL pedestal — seemed a promising host for fans in 2011, but, sadly, the actor's revival of popular characters like Wayne's World's Wayne, Ross Perot, and Church Lady seemed more unoriginal than nostalgic.
So, considering Carvey's stint, Martin Short's hosting gig Saturday seemed worrisome — would we be forced to sit through Ed Grimley and Jerry Lewis sketches years after we already grew sick of them watching best of SNL VHS tapes?
As it turned out, absolutely not. Short proved to be a delightful host who was just as hilarious as he was current. We were subjected to a split second of Ed Grimley, but only during Short's jolly monologue, which brought us even more exciting SNL characters of seasons past. Well, rather, cast members — Fey, Fallon, Kristen Wiig (complete with Junice baby hand), and honorary cast member Tom Hanks (making his second SNL cameo this year) all joined in Short's Christmas-centric musical number, which marked the seventh this season. This week, however, the musical monologue was worth it — it's hard to say what sight was better: Abe Lincoln with a llama or Short planting a smooch on the predictably stoic Lorne Michaels. Still, each paled in comparison to Short's astute ad lib, "How does a man sit on a piano, I wonder?"
The SNL cameos continued with "A Tony Bennett Christmas," headed up by Alec Baldwin's fan-favorite impression of the crooner. The sketch veered into ESPN Classic territory with its ad-shilling bathroom humor ("It's sure easy to get down in the dumps when you can't take one"), but, then again, anything that reminds us of Will Forte's Greg Stink picks us out of the dumps.
But, following the sketch, we hardly said "Cheerio!" to bathroom humor. The next sketch — about a royal OBGYN being trained to treat the Duchess of Cambridge — mainly centered on euphemisms for female genitalia: "The King-Maker," "Thomas' English Muffin," and, of course, "Her Downton Abbey" among them. Anyone else in the role of the consultant tasked with prepping Bill Hader's OBGYN would have been groan-worthy, but Short even managed to make a dated Camilla Parker-Bowles funnier than the prospect of her Downton Abbey being guarded by a troll that asks you a riddle. Just ask Hader, who couldn't keep a straight face while Short revealed euphemisms for the anal cavity. (In case you were wondering, "The Church of Taint Andrews" is one.)
More impressive, though, was Short's impeccable impression of Larry David as Linus in an adult-themed, star-studded Charlie Brown special, You're a Rat Bastard, Charlie Brown. Typically, Hader's impersonations steal SNL sketches, but his Al Pacino paled in comparison to Short's David. The actor even looked like the Curb Your Enthusiasm star. Other highlights included Taran Killam's Michael Keaton and Jason Sudeikis' Philip Seymour Hoffman — though I can't be the only one wishing Nasim Pedrad's celebrity impressions all didn't sound like Nasim Pedrad. Kristin Chenoweth deserves better — and no, this time around, I'm not talking about Jake Pavelka.
Speaking of zingers, Seth Meyers' one-liners were the highlight of Weekend Update, attracting more laughs than Vanessa Bayer's adorably funny roasting Bar Mitzvah boy and Cecily Strong's ho-hum revival of Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation With at a Party. Jokes about Jersey Shore's finale and criticism of Barbara Walters for asking Hillary Clinton about her hair over her policies were astute enough, but the funniest one-liner of the night was also the bluest: “An Ohio woman who gave birth to her daughter at 12:12 p.m. on 12-12-12 has named her 'Forever.' Which I suspect is how long she’ll be a stripper.”
Samuel L. Jackson, who made a cameo alongside SNL's stars in Short's monologue, returned to appear in Kenan Thompson's recurring — but long dormant — "What's Up With That?" sketch. The premise remains the same, and so does Sudeikis' jaunty tracksuit dancing — but this week, the sketch came with a NSFW twist. Pulling a Jenny Slate, Jackson dropped an f-bomb at the end of "What's Up With That?" and followed it up with a "bulls--t." "Come on now, that costs money," Thompson ad-libbed. Your move, FCC.
SNL rounded out its episode with a sketch about two old friends (Fred Armisen and Short) with bizarre hobbies (acting for EMT training) and habits (eating 25 bagels a day) that was sorely lacking a Stefon, and a Christmas pageant audition sketch with Short and musical guest Paul McCartney that quickly turned into a Christmas-themed performance from the former Beatle. But while McCartney turned in two other lovely performances — including a reprise of his "Valentine" single — the rock legend was overshadowed by SNL's touching cold open, which featured the New York Childrens Chorus singing "Silent Night" as a quiet tribute to the Sandy Hook tragedy. The moment echoed Paul Simon's post-9/11 performance of "The Boxer" on the sketch comedy series, and proved, once again, SNL can be as heartfelt as it is funny. We might not be able to sleep in heavenly peace for some time, but dammit if SNL didn't help us try.
[Image Credit: NBC]
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